Highlights
- Three tourists died from hantavirus on Dutch cruise ship after leaving Argentina.
- Argentina reports 101 infections since June 2025, double the previous year.
- Experts link rising cases to climate change helping rodents move into new areas.
The health emergency comes as Argentina sees a sharp rise in hantavirus cases. Local health researchers blame the increase on climate change.
The World Health Organization consistently ranks Argentina as having the highest number of cases of the rare rodent-borne disease in Latin America.
Higher temperatures allow the virus to spread to more places because warmer weather helps rodents that carry hantavirus survive in new areas, experts say. People usually catch the virus from contact with rodent droppings, urine or saliva.
"Argentina has become more tropical because of climate change, and that has brought disruptions, like dengue and yellow fever, but also new tropical plants that produce seeds for mice to proliferate," told Hugo Pizzi, a leading Argentine infectious disease specialist to AP.
"There is no doubt that as time goes by, the hantavirus is spreading more and more."
The Argentine Health Ministry reported 101 hantavirus infections since June 2025, roughly double the number recorded during the same period the previous year.
The disease killed nearly a third of patients last year, up from an average death rate of 15 per cent in the five years before.
Climate fuels outbreak
Officials are trying to find out where infected passengers travelled in Argentina before boarding the Dutch-flagged cruise liner MV Hondius in Ushuaia, a southern city known as the end of the world.
The first death on board was a 70-year-old Dutch man who died on 11 April. His 69-year-old wife died on 26 April. The third passenger, a German woman, died on 2 May.
The virus can take between one and eight weeks to show symptoms, making it hard to know where passengers caught it.
The government's leading theory is that the Dutch couple caught the virus during a bird-watching trip in Ushuaia, according to two investigators.
Because early symptoms look like flu, "tourists might think they just have a cold and not take it seriously.
That makes it particularly dangerous," told Raul González Ittig, genetics professor at the National University of Córdoba to AP.
Argentina has faced wild weather in recent years. Dry spells push animals out of their usual homes in search of food and water.
Heavy rain leads to plant growth, scattering seeds that attract rodents. Although cases once appeared only in southern Patagonia, now 83 per cent are found in Argentina's far north, the Health Ministry said
